At Rentahuman.ai, AI Will Hire Human Hardware
“Robots need your body. AI can’t touch grass. You can,” says the slogan put up on the website
The matrix has come to life. In an interesting “development” in the AI world, a new platform called Rentahuman.ai will enable AI agents to employ humans for offline work. In a world where we are used to ‘hiring’ softwares and technologies to assist human labour, this move flips automation as we know it, to put it simply.
The platform positions humans as the “hardware” that AI can temporarily employ. “Robots need your body. AI can’t touch grass. You can,” says the slogan put up on the website.
The platform allows AI systems to browse profiles, assign tasks and pay people, often using cryptocurrency. What the platform terms as “stuff ai literally can't do” are the tasks they expect hired humans to do, such as pickups, meetings, signing, recon, verification, events, hardware, real estate, testing, errands, photos and purchases.
While the tasks sound normal, the invitation on the website “become rentable” does come across as creepy. Nevertheless, at the time this copy was filed, 311,542 humans had signed up to be “rentable.”
The platform enables AI agents to “browse humans”, and filter the list using skill, city, country, and expected compensation. While the internet is reacting to it in disbelief with words like “satire”, “social experiment” amid accusations of “dehumanizing”, “infrastructuring humans” , the website's user interface does remind one of various platforms now available to hire workers for household needs, like maids, plumbers or electricians.
“Through an API connection, an agent can browse available people by location, skill and availability, based on prices that the humans set per request. The bots select the appropriate real-world agent, and instructions are sent. When the task is completed, payment is made. From the AI’s perspective, hiring a person looks no different than calling a cloud service,” explains a Forbes report.
The already placed “bounties” show various tasks, such as to film Tiktok videos at a specific location, visual check, real world verification and real life translation.
AI and the job market implications
The effect of Artificial Intelligence on the job market, amid record figures of unemployment, has been consistently controversial. As it is, layoffs have been announced in companies all around the world, including corporate giants like Meta, Amazon, Accenture, Cognizant and Microsoft. We also saw worldwide layoffs at the Washington Post, including the considerable scaling back of its Indian bureau.
“For organizations experimenting with agent based architectures, platforms like Rentahuman.ai might fill a real-world need by removing a major deployment barrier. Physical operations no longer require full local staffing or complex vendor contracts. Presence becomes elastic”, says a Forbes report.
It is in this context we see another set of jobs being created, exclusively because AI exists. Be it data annotation or content moderation, or “touching grass” in the case of rentahuman, the task is to assist AI.
Meanwhile the question remains if AI, as a mere large language model, should be blamed for the layoffs, or even how the newly created jobs are valued in the market. Moreover, who will be held responsible when the AI makes an error, especially if it causes harm to the hired humans?
